Friday 10 September 2010

Top 5 Vincents

Another pub generated top five this week. Can't remember how we got on to the topic but Vincent is one of those names that seems to me to be unerringly cool.

1. Vincent van Gogh – An artist I really didn’t appreciate until I saw his work for real. I’m no connoisseur but seeing the texture and depth of paint on the original canvas adds an new dimension to his work. He lived briefly in Isleworth, not far from a flat I used to rent, though disappointingly I'm yet to discover any paintings produced during that period.


2. Vincent Furnier – Having been given such a fabulous rock’n’roll moniker at birth I'm not sure why he decided he needed a stage name. Never been the greatest fan of his music but you have to admire someone who can rip the heads of baby dolls one moment and play golf with Ronnie Corbett the next.


3. Vincent Price – A genuine legend of horror. For some reason he's associated in my mind with playing Dracula but a quick Google of his filmography suggests he never did.


4. V.I.N.Cent - One of the robots in “The Black Hole”, Disney’s 1979 attempt to cash in on Star Wars. The slightly desperate acronym stood for "Vital Information Necessary CENTralized" (which someone must have come up with very late on a Friday). Despite being poor substitutes for R2D2 and C3PO, he and his friend Old B.O.B. were the stars of the film.


5. Vinnie Vincent – So good they named him twice. Vincent Cusano was rechristened by Gene Simmons when he replaced Ace Frehley as guitarist in KISS. His tenure was short lived featuring on the “Creatures of the Night” album and tour and the band's first make-up free release “Lick It Up”.



Contenders who didn’t make the cut include Vinnie Jones (Footballer, Actor, Gamekeeper & Thug), Vincent Gallo (Actor, Producer, Composer, Director, Screenwriter, Songwriter, Singer), Vince Cable (Lib Dem MP and now coalition Business Secretary), Vince Hall (Michael Doyle in the original cast of Grange Hill) or Vince Taylor (50’s British r’n’r star and writer of "Brand New Cadillac).

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I have a Vincent Black Shadow T-shirt, the motorbike once owned by my father-in-law and also referred to by Hunter S Thompson in Fear and Loathing. So there we are. (Obviously I've never driven a motorbike in my life.)

Rich

Chopper said...

Possibly the prettiest Motorcycle to have ever been built (I mean that in a masculine way obviously) and with hindsight should have made this top five.